Running channel briefs: product written for where the consumer shops

What it is

The North America running line reached very different retailers. Khounlavong's pricing work showed how different. In spring 2017, 90% of the athletic specialty running business sat above $100, and 92% of the sporting goods business sat below $140. His note on that page read: "Different wallets & purses shop in different places."

His review of the holiday 2017 line in October 2016 found the energy concentrated at the top. For moderate department stores and family footwear it recorded a lack of energy at the lower price levels and a lack of equity in the uppers against the competition. His read-outs repeated one line: stories at the statement level need to translate down to the good level.

A channel brief was the tool for that. It asked for a color or a pack made for one kind of door.

What Khounlavong did

• Asked for fall 2018 packs by channel in his read-out of July 13, 2017. For sporting goods he asked for a Pegasus 35 pack of two products built on the colors and materials of the 1983 original and the 2006 model. For back to school he asked for a pack of three products for Famous Footwear and a pack of two for Kohl's.
• Set the distribution of each spring 2018 pack in writing, account by account, with the reason. One pack went to city specialty and boutiques only, to drive energy. Another went broad because its colors were democratic. Finish Line received two packs on January 1 because its fiscal year ended in February.
• Carved packs for single accounts in the holiday 2017 plan: a black and white pack for Nordstrom only, a gold pack for family footwear and a gold pack for moderate department stores.
• Wrote the channel briefs for men's running footwear. Three of them show the method.
• The fall 2017 Lunar pack brief of November 2016 covered three products, two colors of the Lunar Converge and one of the Lunar Apparent, flowing July 1 to Kohl's and Famous Footwear. The stated reason was to give the consumer an elevated treatment and cascade energy from performance to core. The men's pack was forecast at 85,000 units and $3.5M. The energy color carried a $5 upcharge. Each product was given a premium running shoe of that season as its muse.
• The spring 2018 sporting goods brief of February 2017 asked for two colors of the Free RN 2017 that celebrated two college programs, Ohio State and Duke. It asked to see the midsole with and without a speckle treatment.
• The summer 2018 Air Max Torch 4 brief of July 2017 was written for family footwear and Academy. The two men's colors were forecast at 22,000 and 30,000 units, flowing April 1 on a 6 to 12 month lifecycle.

Results

• The holiday 2017 master line plan carried the Nordstrom pack and both gold packs as dated lines, with product codes and prices.
• The forecasts in the briefs are plan figures. No booking or sell-through result for any brief is in the documents.
• The documents do not show which of the briefs and requests the global team adopted.

At a glance